Employment failures

According to the 2005 edition of the EU Labour Force Survey, Malta's employment rate is among the lowest in the European Union and the island has a serious problem in getting women into the labour market. From Euractiv:

In spite of accelerated growth, the EU economy has missed the Lisbon agenda's mid-term goal in terms of employment and is unlikely to meet the overall targets, new figures by Eurostat indicate. In 2000, as part of the so-called Lisbon strategy to stimulate growth and employment, European leaders set themselves the long-term goal of reaching, by 2010, a 70% total employment rate and a 60% female employment rate.

According to the 2005 edition of the EU Labour Force Survey, the employment rate in the 25 EU countries grew from 63.3% to 63.8% between 2004 and 2005. Although this growth was the highest since the launch of the Lisbon strategy in the spring of 2000, it was insufficient to reach the mid-term target of a 67% employment rate, which was agreed by the 2001 Stockholm Council. Statistical extrapolations suggest that, under an optimistic scenario, the mid-term target may be reached only in 2010, when, under the Lisbon strategy, the employment rate should be 70%. Conservative estimates predict that the 2010 rate may only be 65%.

As was the case in past years, Denmark (75.9%), the Netherlands (73.2%), Sweden (72.5%) and the UK (71.7%) were the countries with the highest employment rates, (but they were outperformed by non-EU countries Iceland (83.8%) and Switzerland (77.2%)). The lowest employment rates were in Poland (52.8%) and Malta (53.9%), in candidate country Croatia (54.8%) and in Bulgaria (55.9%)..

Many of the countries at the lower end of the scale have particular problems bringing women into jobs. In Malta, little more than a third of women have jobs; in Italy, only around 45%. Countries with low employment rates also tend to be more manufacturing-oriented and to have weak services sectors. In Poland, only 53.4% work in the services sector; in Romania, the figure is only 37.3%. Within the whole EU, 67.6% work in services and in the most competitive countries, the rate is 75% to 80%.

Relaunch of the Lisbon strategy; More by MaltaMedia, Mark Beunderman and Afred Grixti